Underground Railroad : Barry Jenkins on the Finale Scene That Was Too Beautiful to Keep thewrap.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thewrap.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Barry Jenkins Amazon series saves perhaps its most poignant story for its final episode
Phil Owen | May 15, 2021 @ 10:48 AM
Amazon Prime Video
(This article contains spoilers for the finale of “The Underground Railroad” on Amazon Prime Video)
Throughout the ten episodes of Barry Jenkins’s “The Underground Railroad” on Amazon, Cora (Thuso Mbedu) often thinks about her mother, Mabel.
Mabel (Sheila Atim) is out of the picture before the series begins. As the story goes, she ran away from the Randall plantation where she and Cora had spent their whole lives when Cora was young. And she got away, apparently the slave catcher Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton) says Mabel was the only slave who’s run away from Randall that he wasn’t able to catch.
Is Amazon’s ‘The Underground Railroad’ Based on a True Story?
The stunning epic tale from Oscar winner Barry Jenkins certainly has its roots in historical events, but did this specific story happen?
Phil Owen | May 13, 2021 @ 5:53 PM
Amazon Prime Video
It’s only been four years since Barry Jenkins emphatically put his stamp on Hollywood with “Moonlight,” and now he’s putting his stamp on the world of television with the Amazon series “The Underground Railroad,” adapted from the Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead.
Jenkins directed all ten episodes of the series, and it shows “The Underground Railroad” is a masterpiece. It tells the story of a young slave named Cora (Thuso Mbedu) who escapes a plantation in Georgia and makes a long, arduous journey across several states while being pursued by a dogged slave catcher named Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton).
Was the Underground Railroad Real? How Enslaved People Used Network to Escape From the South
On 5/14/21 at 10:23 AM EDT
The Underground Railroad, from Oscar-winning film-maker Barry Jenkins, premieres on Amazon Prime Video on May 14.
The drama is based on the Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. It is set in the early 1800s and follows an enslaved woman s desperate bid for freedom.
The show and the book are set in an alternate reality, in which the Underground Railroad is a literal subterranean train system.
The actual Underground Railroad was a network of people offering shelter and aid to enslaved people escaping from the South. Members included escapees as well as abolitionists who helped slaves get to the North.